Mind Games (Mind Games, #1)(38)

I roll my eyes at Eden. “It’s called porcelain. And sunscreen is my best friend.” I love this soft white chair. I love this huge, smooth boat. I love the ocean. I love the wind and the waves and the spray. There is nothing out here. There is nothing to do. And since there is nothing out here and nothing to do and only James or Eden or the small, deliberately anonymous crew to talk to, there is nothing to make me feel sick and wrong.

Or at least only a little bit. Because there is still the tap tap tap. It never quite goes away. And the wrong feeling, too, but now it’s a gentle hum and I can pretend like it isn’t there. Pretending is another way of lying, and I am so good at both.

“Girls,” James says, coming from the main cabin onto the deck where Eden is writing a letter to Annie and I am doing nothing, because nothing, nothing, nothing is my favorite. “Are you ready for an adventure?”

I sit up. Eden does, too, casually shifting in her bikini, stretching her legs. I wonder what she feels from him. I don’t like it. I wonder if she feels that I don’t like it from me. I decide to feel nothing, instead. “An adventure?”

“I think we’ve had enough of the open ocean and tiny islands. Time to begin the official study abroad section of your schooling. Or, really, time to club our way through Europe.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Clubbing? Really? Do I strike you as the dancing type?”

“You strike me as exactly the dancing type. You just don’t know it yet.”

Eden jumps up, stretches her arms over her head, the tiny jewel piercing her navel winking an invitation in the sunshine. “Sounds good to me. As long as this adventure includes shopping, too?” She smiles hopefully. James nods and she turns to me and does a ridiculous, exaggerated victory shimmy.

I roll my eyes and snort. She’s funny and beautiful. I wonder if we would have been friends in another world.

“See? Is that so hard?” Eden grins smugly and walks inside, and my accidental smile turns into a scowl.

“Did we have to bring her?”

James throws himself on the lounge chair next to me, putting an arm over his face to shade it from the sun. “Yes, we did.”

“Why? She’s obnoxious.”

“Because,” he says, reaching over and taking my hand from where my fingers are doing the tap tap tap on my thigh. “You tried to kill yourself, remember? So Eden had to tag along to make sure you didn’t get that bad again.”

I start to pull my hand back so I can cross my arms, but he keeps it in his, making a show of examining my fingernails. His fingers trace the inside of my wrist and something flares up inside me and, oh, I am so glad Eden is not here anymore.

James is the only person I can handle touching or looking at my hands. He knows everything they did. He doesn’t care.

“Plus I am terrible at girl talk, and without Annie I figured you’d need someone.”

This time I do yank my hand back. I hate that he brought up Annie. Because the thing about Annie is, I miss her, I do, I worry about her, but…

I also don’t.

Being away from her for the first time in years is a huge relief. And I know she’s safe because they have her and as long as they have her, they have me and for whatever reason they still want me. So Annie is safe. And she’s alone and locked in that horrible prison of a school, and I am a terrible, terrible person for leaving her there.

But I don’t have to look at her and know what I’ve done. I don’t have to listen to her voice get gentle and soft and pierce right to the core of me and remind me, always remind me, of everything I’ve lost and taken. Of everything I still have to lose.

I know that Annie loves me no matter what, that she will always love me, and it is the very hardest thing of all to deal with. I do not want to be loved.

“At least you didn’t bring a Reader. I hate them.”

He laughs. “Me, too. You know the trick to Readers, though?”

“I swear in my head over and over again.”

“That’s a good one, but they get used to it pretty fast. If you can’t focus on pissing them off, then always have a really obnoxious song going in the background of your brain. And if you need to make them feel so uncomfortable they stop listening, think about sex.”

“Sex?”

“Sex.” He is so beautiful I want to crawl across my chair and onto his and have him give me specifics to think about. But he is and has always been and will always be wrong, and I can’t ignore that.

Can I?

“Should you really be giving me tips on how to bypass the people your father has spying on me?”

He smiles, and it’s his sharp smile that I think he only uses with me. “You’re my star pupil, remember? Just because you have to do what he wants you to doesn’t mean you can’t keep parts of yourself secret. It’s about balance, Fia. Balance and patience and time.”

“You’ve never struck me as the patient type.”

He leans back, puts his arms behind his head, and closes his eyes. “Like I said. Secrets.”

James was right. I love dancing. I love it so much I almost don’t crave the alcohol being passed all around me, the drugs I see people taking. I almost don’t wonder how much better the dancing would be if I took something. When I’m really dancing, when I’m in the middle of a crowd in the dark with the pulsing lights and pounding beats, I can lose myself in a way that’s easy to get back from.